


Wretched

by hyenateeth



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyenateeth/pseuds/hyenateeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine, that was her name then. A proud name for such a poor girl, Louison considered with some derision but more pity.  Surely, this girl must be a touch mad. What a strange creature she was, a noble name and bold speech, yet no shoes on her feet nor, likely, a franc to her name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wretched

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spiderfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/gifts).



> For tumblr user spiderfire47, for the Les Mis Trick or Treat exchange! I was actually a a pinch hitter, but this was really fun to do! The prompt I was working off of was "Any two female characters who do not meet in canon, meeting" and I love writing female characters. (Though I am kind of shaky when it comes to canon era and Brick-centric works, so apologies about that?) I decided for one of the one line characters (Louison the dishwasher) meeting a more main character (Éponine). 
> 
> Its just a short scene, but I hope you like what I came up with?

Louison did not think herself particularly wretched.

No, not wretched. Simply tired. She worked long days, till her back ached, and went home to her parents at the end of the day. They were old, ill, and her elder brother was long dead, lost to the sea, where he had gone to when she was little more than a babe. So she still lived with them and supported hem with her meagre earnings, and imagined she would continue to until she could marry. 

She did not know when that would be of course. She should like to marry, certainly. She had had a lover, once. He had been a cobbler named Bernard, and she had loved him, in a way, but things being what they were and going how they did, their affair had ended quietly, uneventfully. 

She still thought of him, sometimes. Mostly she didn’t. 

Still, she would like to marry. She as not so wretched as to be beyond that. She was plain, but not ugly, poor, but not destitute, uneducated, but not stupid. 

No, Louison was not so wretched.

She did have to remind herself of it, sometimes, when her mind weighed heavier on her than normal. 

She reminded herself of it as she left the Musain, shoulders slouching with exhaustion, thin shawl pulled around her shoulders. She was weary. The young men, the students, had met that night. She only ever heard snippets of their conversation as she passed though the room, and they mostly ignored her ( _like a bug, or a rodent perhaps, she considered; insignificant and small_ ), but she heard some things. 

The things she heard worried her. 

She tried not to think of their troubling talk, she was not truly allowed to participate as it was, and she did not know all the things they did, had not read the books they had read or been taught all the history they had, but Louison was not a fool. She knew of the things they spoke. And they worried her.

So she tried not to think of them. None of her business, was it. She was nought to them, so she kept her nose out and her head down. 

So, she was in this troubled mood as she left the Musain after a night’s work, ready for the short walk, little more than a block, to return home, when she was bumped into. 

“Pardon,” said the girl, in a hurried, terse way people who did not actually care for your pardon. However, as she bumped into her, she dropped a parcel, which Louison quickly bent down to pick up. 

“Wait, Madame!” she called after the girl. “Your parcel!”

The girl spun around, and for the first time Louison got a good look at her, illuminated by street lamps and the moon. 

The girls hair and face were dirty, and her clothes were threadbare, her feet shoeless. She had a face that was hard to attach an age to, for she had a certain weathered appearance to her, the way misfortune can age a soul, which Louison had seen before in the back room of the Musain, in the face of the corse drunk who will sometimes grab her to exposit his sorrows. 

The girl looked at Louison much the same way that drunk did, and Louison had to wonder if misfortune made one bold as well as aged. 

“ _Madame_ she calls me!” laughed the girl, approaching back on Louison, and as she got closer Louison could see the unfortunate state of her teeth. “Madame, well thats a fine lot isn’t it? No, I am no Madame, though I am no Mademoiselle either. I am no lady, not like you Madame! No, no, girls like me do not have titles do we? Once upon a time, perhaps, but no longer. That’s fine though, it suits me.”

Louison did not know how to respond. She simply held out the parcel, which the girl took.

“Well, thank you Madame. My father would have have not been happy had I lost another one of these, not happy indeed. Say, are you a working girl, Madame? What these bohemians call a _grisette_? You have that look about you.” 

Louison felt her face flush. “I work,” she said. “But I am an honest woman, I assure you. I am a dishwasher. I have no time for... _bohemians_.”

The girl laughed again, and fixed her thin, dirty chamise, which did not fit properly. “Apologies Madame, I meant no offense. I am sure you are honest; aren’t we all? A dishwasher, you say?” She glanced at the Musain. “Here?”

“Yes.”

The girl looked upon the building, and eyes flickered with something Louison could not place. Then she turned back to Louison, clutching her parcel tighter than before. 

“Tell me, Madame, working in a place like this you must hear some things? Idle chatter, thinking no one hears? Surely you know a thing or two, working here.”

Louison’s blood ran cold as she thought of the back room. Quickly she averted her eyes. 

“No, no. I don’t know anything. I’m just a dishwasher.”  
“Ah, but that’s just it, isn’t it.” The girl leaned in a little closer, dropping her voice like they were conspiring schoolgirls. “Ladies like me and you, Madame, people don’t notice us. It is not a slight to be thought of as nothing you see, not always. Sometimes, it gives you an advantage. You can listen, you can know things. A girl like me, Madame, we got to know things. Wouldn’t survive otherwise.”

The girl pursed her lips, leaning in a little more. “People think I’m just hopeless street wretch Madame, but I ain’t. I can read, I can write, and I know things. What do you know Madame? Have you-”

“Éponine!”

Both Louison and the girl turned, to be met with the sight of a young girl, younger, prettier, but no less wretched. 

“Éponine,” repeated the girl, and her voice was soft, not like the girl before Louison. “Father is looking for you.” 

Éponine, that was her name then. A proud name for such a poor girl, Louison considered with some derision but more pity. Surely, this girl must be a touch mad. What a strange creature she was, a noble name and bold speech, yet no shoes on her feet nor, likely, a franc to her name.

“Azelma,” Éponine greeted her sister, who was entirely different from her, just in the way she stood, her eyes glassy, her thin shoulders showing no strength. It was funny, Louison mused, how different people so close could be. 

Then she turned back to Louison. “Thank you for my parcel Madame. Have a safe walk home. There are dangerous people about.” Then she ran over to her sister, and Louison could hear her saying “Now then, what does he want now?” before both the urchins disappeared down the street.

Louison fixed her shawl. What an odd encounter that was. A poor street girl, asking her what Louison knew?

_And she couldn’t mean- Surely, she wouldn’t know about that back room-_

Louison tried to cast it out of her mind. She should not think of it. Only think, that is a girl who is truly wretched. Louison, her life was not so hard. She was not so wretched.

(The next time she went into that back room though, unnoticed by the men who occupied it, she lingered a little longer, listened a little harder. After all, ladies like her, people don’t notice her.)


End file.
